When we think of women working in the early 20th century, we think of their traditional roles in the home, but some women were already moving into the paid workforce. In the 1920s, women traveled far—both geographically and socially—to work in the newly-established city of Miami, Florida.

Ella Holgersohn emigrated from Sweden with her twin sister to make her life in Miami, Florida, and found herself working as the second cook in a grand estate. Faye Jones left her Midwestern home after successfully completing nurses training in St. Louis, Missouri to also live and work in Miami. Althea McDowell Altemus entered the Miami workforce out of necessity; by 1920 she was a divorced single mother needing to provide for both herself and her young son. Her determination and creativity allowed her to navigate the dangerous waters of social disapproval to be successful in the workplace.

All three women took advantage of a time period where women were beginning to emerge from the traditional roles of wife and mother to pursue careers of their own. Though they chose to work in female-dominated fields, their steps forward allowed those who walked after them to travel even further.

Ella Holgersohn stands near the boat landing at Vizcaya, James Deering’s Miami winter home, circa 1920. Vizcaya Museum and Gardens Archives, Miami, Florida.

The early 20th century was a time when social roles were shifting rapidly. Enough women were in the paid workforce that the United States Department of Labor felt the need to establish an agency dedicated to learning about and advocating for women at work. In 1920, the Women’s Bureau was established to, “formulate standards and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment.”

The picture of a 1920s-era woman working for pay is quite consistent: She is young and she is unmarried. Census data for “breadwinners” (the Census term used at that time for anyone earning a wage—the term did not then imply sole financial support for a household as it might today) in 1900 shows that 45 percent of female breadwinners were younger than 25, and 68 percent were under 35. Only 5.6 percent of married women earned a wage. The pattern seems to suggest that young women would earn a wage until marriage, after which a woman’s talents and efforts would be used in their home. Incidentally, I hesitate to use the term “work” for paid employment, since I believe strongly that all women work—they just do not always earn a paycheck for their efforts.

Faye Lucille Jones, circa 1920. Vizcaya Museum and Gardens Archives, Miami, Florida.

Faye Jones was one of many young women who earned her pay as a nurse in Miami, Florida, where she had moved soon after graduating from nurses training in St. Louis, Missouri. At the time both Miami and the nursing profession were in their infancy . Miami was incorporated in 1896 with a population of 444; in 1920, when Faye was 26, the city’s population had grown to almost 30,000. In the 1920s, nursing leaders understood that academic and clinical knowledge were both important aspects of nursing training, and so more nursing schools were affiliated with universities. The goal was to promote scientific nursing knowledge, which could not be done following the older, apprenticeship model of training from earlier years. As a result, nursing transformed from a job into a profession.

We do not know why Faye moved so far from her family, but she did not seem to have been estranged from them. One wonders about the strength and determination necessary to leave a familiar home, alone, to make a new life in a new and still-wild city.

While living and working in Miami, one of Faye’s private duty patients was James Deering, an agricultural industrialist and vice-president of the International Harvester Corporation. He had built a winter home, named Vizcaya, and Faye, while tending to her patient, wrote letters home to her mother. Her Vizcaya archival collection includes four letters written to her mother in February and March of 1920, on Vizcaya letterhead. The collection also includes several digital images.

In this letter of March 1, 1920, Faye tells her mother that the cake she sent had arrived, and admits that, “I ate the icing but the cake was pretty stale.” Vizcaya Museum and Gardens Archives, Miami, Florida.

Her letters are another chance to lament the lost art of letter writing, since they are so full of personality and detailed information. Faye marvels at the décor, opulence, and beauty she finds surrounding her at Vizcaya. She especially notes the fresh flowers that are arranged in each room in breathtaking bouquets, and the orchids that grow both indoors and out. She tells of her patient, that he is improving, and mentions friends that have visited as well as travel plans that she has made. She asks impatiently for more details about a friend’s beau and their plans. Faye also thanks her mother for a piece of cake that was sent, even as she admits that the cake was stale and she could only eat the icing.

Faye Jones and an unidentified man sit together on a porch, circa 1920. Vizcaya Museum and Gardens Archives, Miami, Florida.

The woman whose voice is heard in these letters is a strong, confident, and happy woman who is living her life on her own terms. A thoroughly modern woman, in any era. Her relationship with her mother seems to be a close one, and she was part of an extended support network of friends and family. One image of Faye shows her sitting on a porch with a young man, but nothing is known about any suitors or whether she ever considered marrying. We know from family correspondence with Faye’s grandniece that Faye lived most of her life in Miami. She never married, and after her retirement from nursing, she eventually moved to San Antonio, Texas where she passed away in 1977.

Another early-century woman who travelled even further to work in Miami was Ella Holgersohn. Ella was born in Sweden and immigrated to the United States in 1911. Swedish emigration was fairly common at that time; during the Great Emigration, from 1850 to 1939, approximately 1.5 million native Swedes left their homeland. Ella travelled with her twin sister and by about 1920 she was working at Vizcaya as the second cook, where she married the chauffeur and lived and worked until at least 1923.

Ella Holgersohn and her husband, Joseph Goddard, enjoy time off in Miami circa 1920. Vizcaya Museum and Gardens Archives, Miami, Florida.

Images from her collection, which was donated to Vizcaya’s archives in 2011, are relaxed snapshots of leisure in a young Miami. Vizcaya staffers visit the beach, enjoy picnics together, and go boating on Biscayne Bay. Ella and her husband, Joseph Goddard, are shown together, the picture of a youthful, happy couple: He is the proud husband, she the shy bride. Their time together was brief, however, since Goddard passed away in 1935.

From correspondence with Ella’s descendants, we know that she continued to work for Mr. Deering in New York, Chicago, and Florida for 20 years.  She later remarried and lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Before her death in 1970, Ella was reunited with her twin sister, and they lived together at the end of their lives, as they had at the start.

Ella breaks the mold by continuing paid work after marrying. There is no known record of children, so perhaps that is the difference in her case? We may never know. Regardless, she was a loyal and valued professional who worked for many years, which speaks to her creativity and diligence.    

It should also be noted that during this time, many women faced significant challenges to obtain and retain paid employment. Marriage often meant that a woman would choose to focus on her family, but it also could mean that a woman would lose her job, even if she wanted to continue working. Childbearing was an additional accepted reason for dismissal from paid work, and divorce and single motherhood were personal events to be hidden away completely. Althea McDowell Altemus, who was James Deering’s personal secretary, writes in her memoir Big Bosses that she was very careful to hide the fact that she was a divorced woman with a young child.

Ella and Faye both were courageous enough to grab hold of new chances when they were young women. And Althea worked hard to build a career, despite the extra difficulties that her marital and parenting statuses presented. Whether traveling to a new country, or to a new city, Faye and Ella had the emotional support of family members, from back home or from the people they gathered around them in their new homes. All three women worked in traditionally-female occupations, but that should not dim the fact that they sought new opportunities, and in so doing, helped create smoother paths for the women who followed after them.

References

Personal correspondence with Emily Callman, grandniece of Faye Jones and Cheryl Beland, grandniece of Ella Holgersohn.

Our History, The US Department of Labor Women’s Bureau. Retrieved on 2018-11-04 from www.dol.gov/wb/info_about_wb/interwb.htm

1900 Census Special Reports: Statistics on Women at Work based on Unpublished Information Derived from the Schedules of the Twelfth Census (1907). Retrieved on 2018-11-04 from www.census.gov/library/publications/1907/dec/women-at-work.html 

The Great Emigration. Retrieved on 2018-11-04 from www.sweden.se/migration 

Judd, D., Sitzman, K, Davis, G.M. (2009). A History of American Nursing: Trends and Eras. Jones and Bartlett Publishers: Sudbury, MA.

City of Miami History. Retrieved 2018-11-11 from http://archive.miamigov.com/home/history.html

Bachin, R. F. (2016). Afterword: Chronicling the clerical life of Althea Altemus. Big Bosses. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.

Karen Urbec, MLIS, is the archivist and digital collections specialist at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami, Florida.